so one of the things that's so horrifying about birth control is that you have to, like, navigate this incredibly personal choice about your body and yet also face the epitome of misogyny. like, someone in the comments will say it wasn't that bad for me, and you'll be utterly silenced. like, everyone treats birth control like something that's super dirty. like, you have no fucking information or control over this thing because certain powerful people find it icky.
first it was the oral contraceptives. you went on those young, mostly for reasons unrelated to birth control - even your dermatologist suggested them to control your acne. the list of side effects was longer than your arm, and you just stared at it, horrified.
it made you so mentally ill, but you just heard that this was adulthood. that, yes, there are of course side effects, what did you expect. one day you looked up yasmin makes me depressed because surely this was far too intense, and you discovered that over 12,000 lawsuits had been successfully filed against the brand. it remains commonly prescribed on the open market. you switched brands a few times before oral contraceptives stopped being in any way effective. your doctor just, like, shrugged and said you could try a different brand again.
and the thing is that you're a feminist. you know from your own experience that birth control can be lifesaving, and that even when used for birth control - it is necessary healthcare. you have seen it save so many people from such bad situations, yourself included. it is critical that any person has access to birth control, and you would never suggest that we just get rid of all of it.
you were a little skeeved out by the implant (heard too many bad stories about it) and figured - okay, iud. it was some of the worst pain you've ever fucking experienced, and you did it with a small number of tylenol in your system (3), like you were getting your bikini line waxed instead of something practically sewn into your body.
and what's wild is that because sometimes it isn't a painful insertion process, it is vanishingly rare to find a doctor that will actually numb the area. while your doctor was talking to you about which brand to choose, you were thinking about the other ways you've been injured in your life. you thought about how you had a suspicious mole frozen off - something so small and easy - and how they'd numbed a huge area. you thought about when you broke your wrist and didn't actually notice, because you'd thought it was a sprain.
your understanding of pain is that how the human body responds to injury doesn't always relate to the actual pain tolerance of the person - it's more about how lucky that person is physically. maybe they broke it in a perfect way. maybe they happened to get hurt in a place without a lot of nerve endings. some people can handle a broken femur but crumble under a sore tooth. there's no true way to predict how "much" something actually hurts.
in no other situation would it be appropriate for doctors to ignore pain. just because someone can break their wrist and not feel it doesn't mean no one should receive pain meds for a broken wrist. it just means that particular person was lucky about it. it should not define treatment.
in the comments of videos about IUDs, literally thousands of people report agony. blinding, nauseating, soul-crushing agony. they say things like i had 2 kids and this was the worst thing i ever experienced or i literally have a tattoo on my ribs and it felt like a tickle. this thing almost killed me or would rather run into traffic than ever feel that again.
so it's either true that every single person who reports severe pain is exaggerating. or it's true that it's far more likely you will experience pain, rather than "just a pinch." and yet - there's nothing fucking been done about it. it kind of feels like a shrug is layered on top of everything - since technically it's elective, isn't it kind of your fault for agreeing to select it? stop being fearmongering. stop being defensive.
you fucking needed yours. you are almost weirdly protective of it. yours was so important for your physical and mental health. it helped you off hormonal birth control and even started helping some of your symptoms. it still fucking hurt for no fucking reason.
once while recovering from surgery, they offered you like 15 days of vicodin. you only took 2 of them. you've been offered oxy for tonsillitis. you turned down opioids while recovering from your wisdom tooth extraction. everything else has the option. you fucking drove yourself home after it, shocked and quietly weeping, feeling like something very bad had just happened. the nurse that held your hand during the experience looked down at you, tears in her eyes, and said - i know. this is cruelty in action.
and it's fucked up because the conversation is never just "hey, so the way we are doing this is fucking barbaric and doctors should be required to offer serious pain meds" - it's usually something around the lines of "well, it didn't kill you, did it?"
you just found out that removing that little bitch will hurt just as bad. a little pinch like how oral contraceptives have "some" serious symptoms. like your life and pain are expendable or not really important. like maybe we are all hysterical about it?
hysteria comes from the latin word for uterus, which is great!
you stand here at a crossroads. like - this thing is so important. did they really have to make it so fucking dangerous. and why is it that if you make a complaint, you're told - i didn't even want you to have this in the first place. we're told be careful what you wish for. we're told that it's our fault for wanting something so illict; we could simply choose not to need medication. that maybe if we don't like the scraps, we should get ready to starve.
we have been saying for so long - "i'm not asking you to remove the option, i'm asking you to reconsider the risk." this entire time we hear: well, this is what you wanted, isn't it?
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Making grown adults stick to an arbitrary schedule isn't just something that happens to people with intellectual disabilities. I didn't want to post this on the last video as this isn't about intellectual disabilities but it does relate.
I worked as a security guard in a section 8 apartment complex. The place had a curfew of 10pm on weekdays and 12am on weekends. As security we were expected to ruthlessly enforce this. If someone was out after those hours, even if it was on their own porch just talking, we were supposed to warn them and then write them up and turn it into the office. They could get evicted for this, with no clear indication of how many times it had to happen, and possibly lose their voucher as well.
These were grown ass adults just hanging out and talking in a place they were paying for (section 8 requires them to pay a portion of the rent, so yes, they were paying for it). Most of them weren't even being rowdy and the ones that were usually just took a, "Hey, you're being a bit loud, could you keep it down please?" to get them to settle down. It was a ridiculous rule (curfews always are).
Coincidentally, a lot of my coworkers at the time didn't like working the place. They got yelled at, treated like shit, and had problems every night. I didn't understand because I never had that issue and then I realized why. They were actually ruthlessly enforcing that rule and were rightfully hated for it where I would walk the property about thirty minutes before and have this interaction.
"Hey," I'd say to a group of people on a porch. "I gotta tell you that curfew is in about thirty minutes."
"And what are you going to do if we don't go in?" someone would reply.
"Well, my break is in thirty minutes too and I like a long break," I'd reply with a shrug. "Make of that what you will."
At which point I'd just get a nod, a laugh, or an "Alright" and then I'd go on, finish up my round, take a nice long break, and then wander back around about an hour after curfew. You know what? Never had a problem. Never had to write someone up. Occasionally I would run into someone still out on their porch and I'd just either go the other way so I "didn't see them" or just give them a wave and keep going.
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Prompt 146
So. Dan is a combination of both Danny and Vlad. Which he has never had an issue with before, but this is just frustrating. It’s not like he can’t deal with the fact the combination of the obsessions forms a protect family one, and he can deal with it. It’s not like he has one anymore.
Which is where the gobsmacked annoyance came from- he was planning on destroying his sort-of past-self, showing this was inevitable. But his obsession, apparently like his old man, decided instead to latch onto the kid, definitely not helped by the fact the brat is like two years dead. If that, he can’t recall, all his ghostliness knows is that the brat is a fucking baby.
He was going to destroy him, he swore! That had been the plan! So how the fuck did he get to helping the brat and the brat’s Jazz packing bags to run away? How the fuck is he responsible parent material, because he is damn sure he definitely isn’t.
Damnit. He’s taking this half-grown clone daughter too. Fuck Vlad, he can rot in that thermos and the Fentons can stay trying to figure out why the portal is no longer working. Being the responsible one sucks though, he’d rather go back to destroying the world but killing the league a second time also sounds like too much work right now. Damnit again.
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Maybe it's a 'study finds water is wet' type of thought, but
considering it's an action movie whose overall plot is "immortal warriors Fuck Shit Up™️", I think it's significant that in The Old Guard the thing that makes Copley pull red strings through his Murder Conspiracy Board and say "[Merrick] doesn't care what [Andy]'s done with [her immortality]" is the people they save, not the ones they kill
Most of the Conspiracy Board is him circling random newspaper headlines and faces on old photographs to (more or less realistically) follow the immortals' treck through the world and big historical events. Which is, in-canon, not much different than putting portraits from different centuries next to a picture of Keanu Reeves and saying "they look the same, clearly Reeves is an immortal!"
But then there are the connections. A little girl holding Joe's hand in WW1 becoming the youngest (and first) woman to be awarded a Nobel Prize for Medicine (suck it, Kozak). Or the grandchild of a family that Andy saved from [something] helping people escape from the Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia.
They are warriors. They have fought and been in the midst of countless wars, major or minor, throughout history. They must have killed as many people as they saved... and yet.
It's not them taking out a random warlord or dictator or rabidly hateful politician that has tangible repercussions in history. It's the children and families they get out of war zones, save from accidents, protect from natural disasters. People to whom they give a second chance at life, and grow to change the world (or even just their own world), like a mysterious stranger once changed theirs just by holding out a hand or patching a wound.
I don't know I just think it's particularly neat
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